Good Fruit

Jesus said that people are like trees. And good people bring forth good fruit. Here is some really good fruit:

Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence:

“The same God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”

“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people . . . They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free . . . it expects what never was and never will be.”

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

“The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution.”

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

Benjamin Franklin:

“God is our creator. He has created us with rights that some governments manage to violate, but no man can change or erase the essence of those rights being a part of us. Our founding fathers understood that in writing the Bill of Rights. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights must be accepted on the whole as the foundation of our government.”

“A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”

“A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district – all studied and appreciated as they merit – are the principal support of virtue, morality and civil liberty.”

“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.”

“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the Constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”

“In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own . . . Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation that must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

George Washington:

“My fervent supplications to that Almighty Being Who rules over the universe, Who presides in the council of nations, and Whose providential aid can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by Himself for these essential purposes.”

“I am sure that never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a Divine Interposition in their affairs than those of the United States, and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency which so often manifested in the Revolution.”

“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

Noah Webster, the Father of American Scholarship and Education:“Every civil government is based upon some religion or philosophy of life. Education in a nation will propagate the religion of that nation. In America, the foundational religion was Christianity. And it was sown in the hearts of Americans through the home and private and public schools for centuries. Our liberty, growth, and prosperity was the result of a Biblical philosophy of life. Our continued freedom and success is dependent on our educating the youth of America in the principles of Christianity.”

“The religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the religion of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence: which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is the genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitution of government.”

“Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.”

“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed. . . . No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”

“Education is useless without the Bible. The Bible was America’s basic textbook in all fields. God’s Word, contained in the Bible, has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct.”

“The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws . . . All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.

“If the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.”

Patrick Henry:

“The Bible is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed.”

“The eternal difference between right and wrong does not fluctuate, it is immutable.”

“It is when people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.”

“Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”

Sam Adams:

“The rights of the colonists as Christians . . . may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the Great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.”

“He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all . . . Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.”

“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign invaders.” – Sam Adams

John Adams:

“Liberty cannot be preserved . . . without a general knowledge among the people.”

“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.”

“The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were . . . the general principles of Christianity . . . I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature.”

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”

“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush, the Youngest Signer of the Declaration of Independence:

“The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this, there can be no virtue, and without virtue, there can be no liberty.”

“By renouncing the Bible, philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral subjects. . . . It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published.”

“The Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life . . .

“By removing the Bible from schools we would be wasting so much time and money in punishing criminals and so little pains to prevent crime. Take the Bible out of our schools and there would be an explosion in crime.”

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution:

“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”

“The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded.”

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

“The very definition of tyranny is when all powers are gathered under one place.”

“Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.”

“The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

“A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the most natural defense of a free country.”

Abraham Lincoln:

“I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.”

“Without Divine assistance, I cannot succeed; with it, I cannot fail! I am busily engaged in the study of the Bible. I believe it is God’s word because it finds me where I am.”

“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

“My dream is of a place and time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.”

Daniel Webster:

“Let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers brought hither their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate . . . and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political and literary.”

“To preserve the government we must also preserve morals. Morality rests on religion; if you destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall. When the public mind becomes vitiated and corrupt, laws are a nullity and constitutions are waste paper.”“If truth be not diffused, error will be; If God and his word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will.If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.”

John F. Kennedy:

“It is not our military might or our higher standard of living that has distinguished us from our adversaries. It is our belief that the state is the servant of the citizen and not its master.”

“And yet the same revolutionary belief for which our forebears fought is still at issue around the globe, the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”

“Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by hard and bitter peace . . .

“Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Ronald Reagan:

“Now I realize it’s fashionable in some circles to believe that no one in government should encourage others to read the Bible. That we’re told we’ll violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values. It was written to protect those values from government tyranny.”

“Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”

“I hope that we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited.”

“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.”

“How do you tell a Communist? Well, its someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and lost it, have never known it again.”

“If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

“The secret of freedom lies in educating people whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” – Maximilien Robespierre

“I am much afraid that the schools and universities will prove to be the great gates to hell unless they diligently labour to explain the Holy Scriptures and engrave them upon the hearts of youth. I advise no one to send their child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution that does not unceasingly occupy its students with the Word of God must become corrupt.” – Martin Luther

“Education ought everywhere to be religious education. Parents are bound to employ instructors who will educate their children religiously. To commit our children to the care of irreligious persons is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves.” – Timothy Dwight, President of Yale University (1795-1817)

“The highest glory of the American Revolution is this; It connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government and the principles of Christianity. From the day of the Declaration . . . they (the American people) were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct.” – John Quincy Adams

“Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure . . . are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.” – Charles Carroll of Carrollton

“To the kindly influence of Christianity, we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys . . . Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government. and all blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.” – Jedediah Morse

“The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.” – Calvin Coolidge

“It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.” – Horace Greeley

“Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.” – William Penn

“Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions – a government of force, and a government of laws; the first is the definition of despotism – the last, of liberty.” -Alexander Hamilton

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the wrong of it is that if it is comfort or money, it will lose that too.” – Somerset Maugham

“The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get rich theory of life.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“But you must remember, my fellow citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and you must pay the price, if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your state as well as in the federal government.” – Andrew Jackson

On Socialism and Communism:

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” – Winston Churchill

“In practice, socialism didn’t work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy.” – David Horowitz

“Socialism, in general, has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” – Thomas Sowell

“If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.” – Thomas Sowell

“The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and a big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country.” -Lyn Nofziger